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22 September 2015

Slurry for cereal stubble

Last July, we visited our friend Diego Gala Merino in his dairy in Escalona del Prado (Segovia). He and his father own a fantastic farm and they are absolutely passionate about farming... we could share a few hours with them which was a really pleasure for us.

In the farm, there is a large pool (3m deep, 50m length and 25m width) to store the slurry generated by 300 cows... this pool can be full in 6 months if any emptying task isn’t carried out. As you can see in our video, they have a nice Joskin Euroliner spreader of 26,000 liters (his great team is composed of his nice Massey Ferguson 7626 Dyna6 and this Joskin spreader)... he has to fill about 250 Joskin spreaders to empty the pool absolutely.

The empty jobs are performed in summer, so he throws the slurry on cereal stubble (the dose used is of 50,000 l/ha). Diego told us that he don't sell slurry because he throws it on his fields or he sometimes gives slurry away to his friends. Other farmers sell slurry at 30€/trailer but it is not very common in his area. Emptying tasks continue in winter (slurry are thrown on sunflower stubbles and fallows) to allow them beginning with forage campaign in spring. As Diego told us, if he wants to empty the pool, it takes him about a month at full time.

The most important problem when he empties his pool is the sand placed on the bottom. They use sand to cows can lie down. They need to shake slurry because there is too much sand in pool (they use the old Kubota K1-150… it was made in Spain). This sand also generates problems in Joskin spreader so sometimes they have to go into it to clean it using pressurized water because sand clogs all pipes. This is the reason because they don’t inject slurry directly into the ground.